Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [95]
The Tartar thrust some brushwood into the flames, drew closer to the fire, and said: “My father ill. When he dies, my mother, my wife come here. They have promised.”
“What’s the use of having a mother and a wife here?” asked Smarty. “It’s all foolishness, brother. The devil is tormenting you, damn his soul. Don’t listen to the accursed one. Don’t surrender to him. If he talks about women, answer him: ‘Don’t want them.’ If he talks about freedom, tell him straightway: ‘Don’t want it.’ You don’t need anything. Neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor freedom, nor house, nor home. I don’t want anything, damn their souls!”.
Smarty took a swig at the bottle and went on: “Brother, I’m no peasant, I don’t come from the class of slaves, I’m the son of a sexton, and when I was free in Kursk I wore a frock coat, but now I have brought myself to such a point that I can sleep naked on the earth and eat grass. God grant everyone such a life! I don’t want for anything, and I don’t fear anyone, and I know there is no one in the world as rich and free as I am! From the very first day they sent me here from Russia, I got into the swing of it—I wanted for nothing. The devil was at me for a wife, for a home, for freedom, but I told him: ‘I want for nothing!’ I tired him out, and now, as you can see, I live well and don’t complain about anything. If anyone should give an inch to the devil and listen to him just once, then he’s lost and there’s no salvation for him: he’ll sink into the bog up to his ears and never crawl out again. It’s not only boys like you, poor stupid peasants, who get lost—even well-educated gentleman fall by the wayside. Fifteen years ago they sent a gentleman here from Russia. There was something he refused to share with his brothers—he had forged a will or something. They said he was a prince or a baron, but maybe he was just an official. Who knows? Well, this gentleman came here, and the first thing he did was to buy a house and some land at Mukhortinskoe. He said he wanted to live by his own labor, by the sweat of his brow, because, he said, he was no longer a gentleman but an exile.1 So I said: ‘God help you, it’s the best thing you can do!’ He was then a young man, a hustler, always busy, he used to mow the grass himself and ride sixty versts on horseback. And that was the cause of his trouble.
“From the very first year he would ride to the post office at Gyrino. He would be standing with me on my ferryboat, and he would say with a sigh: ‘Ah, Semyon, it’s a long time since they sent me any money from home.’ And I’d say: ‘You don’t need money, Vassily Sergeich. What good is it? Throw all the past away, forget it as though it had never existed, as though it was only a dream, and begin a new life. Don’t listen to the devil,’ I’d say to him. ‘He’ll never bring you any good, he’ll only tighten the noose. At present you want money,’ I’d tell him, ‘but in a little while you’ll be wanting something more, and then you’ll want still more, but if you have put your heart on being happy, then you’ll have to learn not to want anything. Yes.… Already,’ I’d pursue the argument, ‘fate has played cruel tricks on both of us, but it’s no good going down on your knees and begging his mercy—you have to despise fate, laugh in his face! Then fate will begin laughing at itself.’ That’s what I told him.… Well, two years passed, and I ferried him across to this side of the river, and one day he was rubbing his hands together and laughing. ‘I’m going to Gyrino,’ he said, ‘to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, and has come to join me. I have a nice kind wife.’ He was breathless with joy. And the next day he arrived with his wife, a pretty young lady wearing a hat, with a little girl in her arms. And lots of luggage of all kinds. My Vassily Sergeich was spinning around her, he couldn’t take his eyes away from her, and couldn’t praise her enough. ‘Yes, brother